Friday, 29 January 2016

The Complete Package tells the story of Lenny Barclay, mayor of a sleepy Colorado mountain town, who hasn't been able to pick herself up following the death of her partner. Estranged from her son and having let her business go to pieces, nothing seems to touch her any more. When a corporate planner, Sloane, arrives intent on changing the face of the town forever and buying her business, Lenny gets a bit of her bite back, but it turns into far more than a professional battle.

As a romantic read, this one ticks most of the boxes. Lenny and Sloane develop an entirely realistic antagonistic relationship and both are difficult to like at times. There are some genuinely funny moments - for instance, the log incident - and it builds to a satisfying romantic resolution that doesn't dodge the issues of the two characters. Equally, the use of location in this novel is superb. The landscape is integral to both the plot and Lenny's characterisation and it's definitely another character in itself, maybe the most important one. Something else I liked was the twist towards the end, entirely in keeping with Sloane's character.

However, there were aspects of this one I didn't like and they're probably more personal preferences than anything else. I'm not a fan of giving animals viewpoint chapters in the middle of adult novels and those chapters took me out of the narrative a little. Similarly, some of the sex scenes might've been indicative of character but they took time away from other things in the book I found more important.

Ultimately, The Complete Package, is a nice, easy read that deals with universal themes of grief and greed. It might build to a expected conclusion but it's nice getting there. For all the emphasis on Lenny in the narrative, though, it's Sloane who's stuck with me since I finished this book.

Thursday, 21 January 2016

Don't you just love it when a writing project develops legs and waddles in a completely different direction to the one you'd carefully plotted out for it?

Back in November, I wrote about the perils of naming a walk-on character in the fourth draft of my current WIP. One of my protagonists had walked into a cafe and started chatting to the owner. It's very unusual for me to actually want to write heterosexual romances into my novel drafts but these two just clicked. So I began hastily thinking about rewriting that protagonist's arc a little bit. Fine. It was going to be tricky but I could do it.

But something else was niggling. My other protagonist becomes embroiled in a fling halfway through the novel that doesn't add much that couldn't be taken on by another character. The more I thought about it, the more I had to concede that my novel was operating a one-in one-out policy of its own accord and I'd be foolish to argue. For all the good reasons it threw at me to bring in Ed, there were correspondingly sound ones to remove Selina.

This character extraction is proving a little trickier. I've been working from a heavily marked-up third draft with notes that are now completely obsolete as I rewrite entire scenes from scratch. To combat that sensation of being adrift, I've created a chapter check list about what needs to be added/removed in each chapter. Once the fourth draft is done some earlier chapters will need ironing out to remove stuff that's now irrelevant. Yet it's all perfectly doable.

The fourth draft's currently at 31,170 words and I'm making slow and steady progress. I'm labouring under the assumption that the novel knows what it's doing. Let's hang onto that for as long as possible, shall we?

Thursday, 7 January 2016

The Dark Mirror stars Olivia de Havilland as twins Ruth and Terry Collins. A man is murdered and the woman suspected is Ruth. However, thanks to some complex legal wrangling, neither she nor her twin sister Terry can be convicted of the crime because no one knows which of them did it. Lieutenant Stevenson (Thomas Mitchell) is determined to solve the case and asks psychiatrist Dr. Scott Elliot (Lew Ayres) to work out whodunnit.

My Olivia de Havilland education is sadly lacking with The Dark Mirror only my third film of hers (see reviews of Government Girl (1943) here and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) here). However, it's not as though I'm unaware of her excellence and maybe her centenary year is the right time to delve further into her career. Certainly, she is the reason why The Dark Mirror is so interesting. The psychological discussions seem a little dated now but the nuances of character that de Havilland brings to both women are excellent. She plays a nice woman and an evil one with such subtlety that, even when you're clued in on what's going on, it's a thoroughly enjoyable spectacle. It's not difficult to see how the special effects of de Havilland playing both parts was managed but it doesn't have to be complex, it just has to work, and it does. If you didn't know there was only one actress involved, I doubt you'd be able to guess.

It's an atmospheric film and I'll admit I was getting nervous the closer I got to the end. There's a twist that I was both expecting and hoping for and the reasoning behind the murder comes across as refreshingly human in the end. Ultimately, I was gripped by this one and my tiptoeing into the films of Olivia de Havilland is going well.

Friday, 1 January 2016

You know, every year I seem to write in these posts that things got worse when I thought they couldn't. Guess what? Yeah, same goes.

Quite frankly, I'm a mess and there's no way of fixing me. Thanks to my anxiety, my world has continued to shrink all year until I'm capable of doing very little beyond sitting in this chair. That makes a celebration of 2015 a little redundant and it certainly doesn't bode well for 2016.

So, yes, I finally completed my PhD in 2015 but so what? It's not like I can do anything with it. I can't apply for the jobs I want or volunteer for teaching experience so, essentially, I've wasted my time.

People in my life like to point to the PhD as a sign of success in the same way they talk about the short stories victories I've had this year and the fact that I twice stood for local election. What they don't seem to understand is that it's all pretty irrelevant when you can't build on it. After all, the intention wasn't to get a new certificate to brighten up these four walls.

And what about the writing? Well, back in July I wrote this: But so I can write - so what? That makes no difference to anything, it changes nothing. The things I can't do are weighing down the scales on the other side and I'm not making enough headway with my writing to keep me afloat. So...what? Well, I don't know. It still stands. Writing is one of the only things I've got left but I can barely bring myself to focus any more. The sad thing is, there are all these stories I've written or partly written and I'm the only one who can work out how they should ultimately look but I can't do it. I've been writing primarily for myself for a while now but maybe there just comes a point where happy endings don't come easy. And my characters... Well, they deserve happy endings.

Ultimately, I don't think this is my fault. I tried this year and I pushed myself hard. People who suggest otherwise don't know a thing about it. The things I can't do are the things other people do without thinking and it isn't just vague anxiety stopping me - it's acute and it's debilitating. Faced with that, what do you do?

There won't be a traditional companion piece looking forward to 2016 because I can't write one. However, I do have some positive memories of 2015 before things got quite this bad. Viva day was enjoyable, as were London and York, plus all the afternoons spent with my nieces watching Disney films on repeat. Election night was great and I met some wonderful people this year, both politically and otherwise. Thanks to them, primarily for putting up with a hell of a lot of rubbish when other people wouldn't have bothered. Have a little Carol Burnett from me...

Given that I failed miserably with reading challenges in 2015, I've decided on a new approach for 2016 that doesn't require me to commit to external challenges. Maybe this is another sign of me regressing but it's the only way I'm going to put together a 2016 challenge list so que sera sera.

There are three categories in my personal reading challenge with all books identified beforehand. I might have more success with these categories and the first two will at least attack my TBR pile. There'll be individual reviews for the books in those categories then one master post detailing my thoughts on the rereads of the third category.

This post will be updated throughout the year with links. Theoretically.

Challenge One - TBR Pile

Twenty books taken from my TBR bookcase. Only stipulation is that they can't be classics - they get a list of their own.

Twenty books taken from my TBR classics Kindle list and bookcase. I should really have read some of these already and several of these have been on TBR lists for the last few years.

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens

The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

The Europeans by Henry James

Mathilda by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The Evil Guest by J.S. Le Fanu

Born in Exile by George Gissing

The Whirlpool by George Gissing

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume

Charlotte's Inheritance by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Henry Dunbar by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett

In the Days of My Youth by Amelia Edwards

Challenge Three - Rereading Challenge

I don't reread enough and I want to. Reorganising my books a few months ago reminded me how many fantastic books I have that I'd like to read again. This list is longer than the first two for a very good reason - Harry Potter has seven books in itself!

Well, I failed quite spectacularly at all the challenges I attempted. No surprise there but the books I did manage to read are linked below.

New Author Challenge

I suppose, in my defence, I read other books by 'new to me' authors so this looks worse than it was. Out of the three I got to, Dead to Me was my favourite and I'll be reading more of Staincliffe's work in the future.

I did a little better with this one and, again, I read other books by women not related to the challenge. Thoroughly enjoyed the Frances Brody novels I read this year and Stella Gibbons is always a favourite.

One benefit of not reading enough is that the good books I've read stand out that little bit more. Interesting thing? I read all of these in the first seven months of the year. You can find the complete list of books I've read this year here but these are my top five, in no particular order.

Dead to Me by Cath Staincliffe

The first book I read in 2015 is still one of my favourites. A prequel to the Scott & Bailey television series, this was an excellent read and the plan is still to read the next novel when I get a chance. My full review can be found here.

Felix Holt, the Radical by George Eliot

It's taken quite a while for me to find an Eliot book that really got me but Felix Holt turned out to be it. Almost a year later I'm still thinking about the evocative riot scenes and this is one of those rare novels I remember exactly where I was when I read it, down to the bumps on the track between Wakefield and Sheffield. My full review can be found here.

Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature by Emma Donoghue

My favourite non-fiction book of the year, this is an excellent analysis of same-sex desire that has provided me with so much potential reading material that it's already paid for itself ten times over. My full review can be found here.

Murder in the Afternoon by Frances Brody

My infatuation with Kate Shackleton doesn't seem to be easing but who cares? Out of the three Brody novels I reviewed in 2015, this one is my favourite thanks to the Wakefield setting. My full review can be found here.

Here Be Dragons by Stella Gibbons

Here's another author who I could read forever. No matter what I think of a Gibbons plot, the settings are evocative and the characters memorable. Here Be Dragons is another excellent examination of post-war London and it struck a chord. My full review can be found here.